Humanity and Violence vs. Vegetation and Innocence Theme Analysis

Yeong-hye’s abrupt change in character does not only include her choice to become a vegetarian. Over the course of the novel, the book tracks her journey away from reality as she expresses a desire to both figuratively and literally become a plant. This desire is spurred by the terrible and violent nightmares that she has, from which she starts to understand that humans are inherently abusive and she wants to avoid that kind of life. Yeong-hye’s self-destructive pursuit of a life as a plant symbolizes the attempt to escape the rage, violence, and harm that comes with being a human—though her attempts at escape ultimately prove to be futile. The novel thus argues that humanity is inherently destructive and that it is impossible to maintain or reclaim one’s innocence as part of this species.

Han first establishes the violence against which Yeong-hye is rebelling in the first section of the novel. This is the only time that Han provides the reader with a glimpse into Yeong-hye’s murky thoughts in fragmented sentences and phrases. Han reveals Yeong-hye’s fear of violence and her worry that she will harm other living beings in her dreams. The first dream Yeong-hye describes includes images of “long bamboo sticks strung with great blood-red gashes of meat [...] Blood in [her] mouth, blood soaked clothes sucked onto [her] skin.” She continues, explaining that she had “pushed that red raw mass into [her] mouth, felt it squish against [her] gums, the roof of [her] mouth, slick with crimson blood.” This visceral language establishes her horrors at the consumption of meat and her realization of the role of human violence in its production—which is why she is compelled to become a vegetarian. Mr. Cheong critiques the irony of Yeong-hye’s decision to become a vegetarian, since she was never a picky eater before, and he had always been impressed by her ability to skillfully slice, marinate, and carve whatever meat she would serve him. But it is precisely these actions that begin to haunt Yeong-hye, as she recalls how the day before she had her first dream, she started to squirm while mincing frozen meat, and sliced her finger open. This moment sparks a kind of recognition in Yeong-hye, that like these animals, she, too, is viewed as a commodity to be consumed by Mr. Cheong.

In the second section of the book, “Mongolian Mark,” Yeong-hye takes her decision to become a vegetarian even further as she continues to pull away from the human violence that she is both envisioning and experiencing at the hands of Mr. Cheong and her family members. She begins to act more and more passively and is compared to a flower as Han draws a connection between vegetation and the avoidance of harm. Han first demonstrates Yeong-hye’s affinity for flowers in this section, which directly follows the rape that she experienced at the hands of Mr. Cheong and the force-feeding she experienced at the hands of her family. When her brother-in-law asks Yeong-hye to be in an art project in which he plans to paint flowers on her naked body, she neither assents nor refuses. When he paints her, she does exactly as he instructs, taking her clothes off and lying down on her stomach. In doing so, Yeong-hye aligns herself with the passivity of a plant. After Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law has painted her, she asks him if water will take the paint off, confessing that she doesn’t want it to come off. This demonstrates Yeong-hye’s desire to be connected with the flowers and the innocence and gentleness they represent, as well as her submission as a means to achieve that goal. When Yeong-hye starts telling the brother-in-law about her dreams of devouring meat, the brother-in-law wonders if the dreams had prompted her to start taking off her clothes and bare her breasts to the sunlight, “like some kind of mutant animal that had evolved to be able to photosynthesize.” The word choice, “photosynthesize,” highlights Yeong-hye’s desire to live and consume without having to kill another thing, much like a plant does.

In the third part of the book, Yeong-hye’s desire to live a passive, harm-free existence only becomes more pronounced and embodied, as she starts literally acting like a plant. Yeong-hye is taken to a mental hospital due to her choice to stop eating altogether, but she runs away into the forest to act like a tree. Back in the hospital, she bares her breasts to the sun, pressing herself up against the window; she tells In-hye that the trees are like “brothers and sisters”; and she insists that all she needs to survive is sunlight and water. Yeong-hye’s wish to actually become a tree is the final step in her desire to renounce human violence. Yeong-hye continues to insist that she doesn’t like eating, but the doctors force feed her and then give her a tranquilizing injection so that she doesn’t throw up her food. Thus, the very violence that Yeong-hye is trying to avoid committing is being inflicted on her, which only spurs her obstinacy further. When In-hye tells Yeong-hye that she is being force-fed because they don’t want her to die, Yeong-hye asks, “Why, is it such a bad thing to die?” Her desire to die, or her lack of incentive to live as a human, stems from this violent life to which she has been subjected—Yeong-hye has, in a sense, been violently devoured by those around her, much like she tore apart the meat in her dream.

It is only at the end of the novel that In-hye has some clarity on Yeong-hye’s motivations: as a child, Yeong-hye was the only victim of their father’s beatings, and In-hye sees that Yeong-hye had “absorbed all her suffering inside her.” Even though Yeong-hye’s decisions throughout the novel are extreme, In-hye understands that her sister’s desire to become a plant represents a means of avoiding the violence that human beings commit and endure.